Mr Justice Garnham continued a freezing order against the firm’s former managing director John Blavo in a High Court judgment handed down on 28 January. His judgment states that the firm was asked to provide 23,173 files by 17 August 2015; the firm submitted 976 files on 18 August, ‘but none of these files were requested by the LAA.’ Mr Justice Garnham described the inability of a firm the size of Blavo & Co to provide the files as ‘surprising in the extreme.’

Discrepancies

Furthermore, an affidavit from an investigator in the LAA’s counter-fraud team found wide discrepancies between the firm’s files and the records of HM Courts and Tribunals Service. In a comparison of all mental health tribunal claims against the HMCTS system, the firm submitted 24,658 claims for attendance at tribunals, of which 1,485 were recorded by HMCTS as having taken place.

Confirmation

Of the 101 NHS trusts that were contacted to confirm HMCTS’s records, in two cases the trusts could say the client was in hospital at the time the firm submitted its claims for work to the LAA. In 98 other cases, the trusts had no record of the client being a patient; one said that it had no mental health facilities at the relevant time. The investigation confirmed that in another case the mental health facility was not in operation at the time the tribunal allegedly took place, due to closing and later burning down. Source: The Law Society Gazette